The House of the Wolf (30 page)

EPILOGUE

The breath reeked from Coleridge’s mouth like smoke as the sledge breasted the rise, the runners creaking in the icy ruts of the unmade country road. Beside him, swathed in furs, the burly figure of Abercrombie was silent. The driver was silent too, despite the beauty of the moonlight, as though the terrible happenings at Castle Homolky had laid a blight upon the entire neighbourhood for miles around.

It was the same driver who had brought Coleridge to the Castle, seemingly at some vast distance in time. Where he had been voluble and forthcoming on the outward journey, now he seemed taciturn, almost frightened. Coleridge realised he had never learned the man’s name. He must remember to ask him and give him a good tip when they arrived at the station.

He opened his heavy fur coat quickly and glanced at his silver-cased watch. They still had more than forty minutes before the night express was due and only a few more to their destination. He turned in his seat to look back. Far away, beyond the lifeless glare of the frozen river, lay the dark huddled mass of Lugos and, high above it, on its moated rock, the great decorated ice-cake that was the Castle.

There was a flare of red light coming to the right of the village, and Coleridge remembered the Gypsy Fair. He wondered whether Nadia was looking from her window, like some mediaeval princess, to catch the last glimpse of their conveyance.

Abercrombie broke the dismal silence at last.

‘All’s well, eh, Professor?’

His white teeth glittered in the black beard as he stared sympathetically at his companion.

‘But at what a cost,’ said Coleridge sombrely.

Abercrombie’s eyes dropped.

‘You silence me there, Professor. But you have your life, at least. These things are inexplicable.’

He shrugged and huddled deeper into the furs of the sledge. The two horses were working hard now as they went uphill, and there, several hundred yards ahead, were the dim lights of the station. It was a lonely place, and Abercrombie placed a big hand on Coleridge’s fleshy shoulder.

‘Civilisation, Professor! You will think this a mere dream when the lights of Pest are about you.’

Coleridge shook his head.

‘Say a nightmare, rather.’

All the episodes in which he had taken part were beginning to come back now, with the cloudy vision of an opium addict’s dream. The only sane things that emerged from the misty images that beset his brain were the calm beauty of Nadia Homolky’s face and the strong, controlled presence of her parents in the background.

He shook the mood from him with difficulty, conscious of the icy cold, like the touch of steel upon his face. He groped about his feet for his briefcase and his valise. The briefcase with its useless documents for a Congress which death had interrupted in the most violent and horrific form and which would now never be resumed. He was tempted to hurl it into a wayside snowdrift but suppressed the urge.

His companion was made of stronger stuff and would not understand. Besides, he had saved Coleridge’s life on more than one occasion and the professor had no wish to make another exhibition of himself; the giant Scot had already seen him ill and suffering from the effects of nerves. He did not want to further diminish himself in the doctor’s sight.

They drew up at the remote country station where the dim oil lamps swung in the wind, casting huge gusty shadows on the platforms. There was no sound but the creaking of the weatherbeaten signs, which made a melancholy noise on their rusted chains. As before, Coleridge could not make out the unpronounceable name.

Abercrombie had his own baggage down and was already paying the driver. Coleridge came over to shake hands and add his own tip. The driver thanked them both in his excellent English and bade them a good journey. And then he was turning the horses and in a few moments was a diminishing speck in the tumbled mass of ice and snow.

Abercrombie led the way across the planked platform. At the station-master’s office that worthy, in his best braided cap and uniform, greeted them excitedly in Hungarian before studying their tickets at great length. He then led them to a freshly dusted waiting-room, where a wood fire burned in the stove, and left them. His figure was rapidly lost to sight beneath the thick ice that rimed the windows.

Coleridge went to stand by the pane, clearing a space at a corner so that he could see the train’s arrival. They still had half an hour. Abercrombie stood quite close to him. His eyes had a yellow fire in them, almost like an animal’s. He looked reflectively at the professor’s throat.

The two men turned as the door to an inner office behind them opened. Abercrombie unobtrusively drew away. Colonel Anton’s beaming face appeared in the opening. He wore his shabby cap with the rubbed braiding, and his hooded eyes twinkled above the heavy moustache. The red tabs on his uniform overcoat made vivid bloodlike splashes beneath the overhead lamps, and the Star of Krasnia twinkled at his breast.

Behind him came the dapper figure of Captain Rakosi, in full dress uniform. Both men wore swords as well as pistols. Anton glanced from one to the other and drew himself up in a salute.

Abercrombie stared regretfully at his companion; he pulled his right sleeve even more tightly over his glove.

Colonel Anton beamed benevolently on the two men as he moved forward with the captain.

‘We have urgent business in Pest! We go together, yes?’ he said in passable English, to Coleridge’s considerable astonishment.

The thin whistle of a distant train interrupted the small tableau. Coleridge glanced up at the clock on the waiting-room wall, surprised to find it was some twenty minutes early.

Anton slapped his pistol holster, his teeth strong and gleaming in his smile.

‘In case we meet werewolf again! Silver bullets! Effective, yes!’

He roared with laughter and led the way out to the platform where the faint lights of the train were already showing.

The blanched moonlight shone down on the wild and desolate scene as the four men stood waiting, Rakosi and Anton taking up position on either side of the professor. The station-master hovered pompously with a lantern. Abercrombie, a huge, massive figure, stood apart from the others, his shadow thrown long and heavy on the boards.

His eyes glowed with pale fire, and he held his head tilted to one side in the unearthly beauty of the moonlight.

Faintly, very faintly, so that the others were not even aware of it, his hypersensitive ears caught the howling of the wolves, his brothers, in the wind.

AFTERWORD

Keeping the Wolf at the Door

Thirty-two years ago, I had not yet met Basil Copper.

Of course, I was already well acquainted with his work: while still a schoolboy I had first encountered Basil’s byline in Herbert van Thal’s infamous
Pan Book of Horror Stories
and other British anthologies of the period (it remains my opinion that his tales ‘The Janissaries of Emilion’ and ‘Amber Print’ are amongst the finest short stories the horror field has to offer).

I had also read his two most recent books from the American specialist publisher Arkham House – the collection
And Afterward, the Dark
(1977) and the gaslight Gothic novel
Necropolis
(1980). (It would be some years before I tracked down a copy of his 1973 collection,
From Evil’s Pillow
, from that same highly collectible imprint.) Also, our mutual friend, Arkham House publisher James Turner, had sent me some of Basil’s Solar Pons books – an authorized continuation of the exploits of the Holmesian detective created by Arkham founder August Derleth.

I had been in the audience at London’s Gothique Film Society when Basil had presented classic silent films from his extensive private collection, and I listened attentively when he gave his Guest of Honour lecture at the third British Fantasycon, held in Birmingham in 1977.

But thirty-two years ago we had yet to meet in person. That pleasure was still five more years away – at the opening of a new crime and mystery bookstore in London’s Soho district.

So when, around Christmas 1983, I opened my copy of Basil’s latest Arkham House volume,
The House of the Wolf
, I came to the novel simply as a fan of the author’s work.

I was not disappointed.

Put basically, it is a superior thriller in which a group of occult specialists find themselves trapped in an old Hungarian castle while being stalked by a werewolf. Basil had already proved that he could master a mock-Gothic atmosphere in his earlier works, but the author also brought his considerable erudite knowledge of books and movies to the project, weaving in some sly references and overt homages that invest the novel with a charming subtext which will delight all fans of the genre (after all, Basil had already thoroughly researched his subject, having published a well-received non-fiction study of lycanthropy,
The Werewolf in Legend, Fact and Art
, six years earlier).

From echoes of Agatha Christie’s classic whodunit
Ten Little Niggers
(1939) to Jessie Douglas Kerruish’s memorable werewolf novel
The Hammond Mystery
(aka
The Undying Monster
, 1922), with an occasional nod to Universal’s 1941 film
The Wolf Man
and even Basil’s own
Necropolis
displayed along the way,
The House of the Wolf
is a finely-crafted chiller that appeals equally to horror fans and mystery readers. Its delightfully recognizable cast of Victorian characters are stalked through the shadow-haunted corridors and subterranean torture chamber of Castle Homolky by a bestial murderer whose true identity remains hidden until the obligatory final revelation.

When originally published by Arkham House,
The House of the Wolf
boasted a dustjacket painting and more than forty interior illustrations by the exceedingly talented Stephen E. Fabian. For the title’s twentieth anniversary edition from Sarob Press (and, incidentally, the novel’s first British publication), I was honoured to illustrate Basil’s incomparable prose with my own stylized scribblings.

Although Basil died in 2013 at the age of 89, I am certain that he would have been exceedingly proud of this latest incarnation of his novel of suspense and lycanthropy from Valancourt Books, who are committed to bringing a number of the author’s early titles back into print again.

Long may they continue to do so.

Stephen Jones

London, England

Stephen Jones lives in London. A Hugo Award nominee, he is the winner of three World Fantasy Awards, three International Horror Guild Awards, four Bram Stoker Awards, twenty-one British Fantasy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Horror Association. One of Britain’s most acclaimed horror and dark fantasy writers and editors, he has more than 130 books to his credit. You can visit his web site at: www.stephenjoneseditor.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Basil Frederick Albert Copper was born in London in 1924. As a boy, Copper moved with his family to Kent, where he attended the local grammar school and developed an early taste for the works of M.R. James and Edgar Allan Poe. In his teens he began training as an apprentice journalist, but with the outbreak of the Second World War, he found himself put in charge of a local newspaper office while also serving in the Home Guard. He then joined the Royal Navy and served as a radio operator with a gunboat flotilla off the Normandy beaches during the D-Day operations.

After the war, Copper resumed his career in journalism. He made his fiction debut in
The Fifth Book of Pan Horror Stories
(1964) with ‘The Spider,’ for which he was paid £10. His first novel, a tongue-in-cheek crime story in the Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler mode,
The Dark Mirror
, was turned down by 32 publishers because it was too long, before Robert Hale eventually published a cut-down version. Four years later, in 1970, Copper gave up journalism to write full time.

Copper published fifty-two novels featuring the Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday and also wrote several horror and supernatural novels and a number of collections of macabre short stories. His horror fiction in particular has been receiving renewed attention recently with new editions from PS Publishing and Valancourt Books. Basil Copper died at age 89 in 2013 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.